


A Trip Through Time and Space

by RunningInRoses



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: AU where Sigma gets recruited into Overwatch, Gen, I wrote this like right after Sigma came out and never touched it since, Lena becomes Sigma's best friend because of their timespace warping situations, Sigma just being misunderstood because Talon made him do Bad Things tm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:35:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26966050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunningInRoses/pseuds/RunningInRoses
Summary: It comes at a snail’s pace, Sigma’s face lifting, spazzing as he flits his eyes to her. Startled, still. His palms lay flat on the table, holding him upright. He looks like he’s being weighed down, back hunched as his head struggles to stay straight. The wild look in his pale eyes says so much that Lena can't form into words. She… feels it. It, whatever it is, melds tightly around her body, pressing with a crushing insistence. It hurts to even breathe, and she sucks in the tiniest of breaths.-A fic in which Overwatch captures Sigma and recruits him, with Lena being his guide to a world not ruled by distortions beyond the human mind.
Relationships: Everyone & Sigma | Siebren de Kuiper, Lena "Tracer" Oxton & Sigma | Siebren de Kuiper
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34





	A Trip Through Time and Space

**Author's Note:**

> Hahaha how has this been sitting in my Docs for a year, this is so good.
> 
> I just wanted good things for Sigma and I still do so I may just write a little more to this than just leaving it at a one-shot, but we'll see.
> 
> Please talk to me about Overwatch, I don't get to talk about this game enough:  
> Twitter: @RoseArting  
> Instagram: @rosearting  
> Tumblr: @riroses

Deep down in the depths of Watchpoint Gibraltar is an empty hallway lit by the dingiest of LED lights, housing only two rooms. One, a bathroom, as all buildings have; a dripping faucet and pale tiled walls are its defining features. The other… the interrogation room is probably Lena’s least favorite room in the whole base.

One side is full of recording equipment and hard drives stacked to the ceiling. The other hosts an inset glass window, one way, and a series of chairs for onlookers. A door on the left leads into the second half of the room, which has a simple metal table situated in the middle with two chairs on either side. It’s terribly cold, with the air conditioning running only a little better than it does upstairs where it tried to combat the heat outside. Down here, it’s almost deliberate how locked up the fingers get. Jack had said to wear something a little heavier.

So, Lena strides down into the basement with fur boots, skin-tight gloves, and a heavy heart. She hadn’t been on the mission in Rialto, but she had heard how it went down from McCree. The team of six tried to carefully navigate a truck full of cargo to the other side of the city for hover-carrier transport and, per usual, a team of Talon had staged an intervention. They were surprisingly organized, meaning they had intel. And, perhaps even worse, a new member seemed to join. 

‘He floated inches off the ground,’ McCree retold, ‘like he was magical or something. Had this big ol’ chestplate but he was so thin underneath. I thought if I shot his hand it would snap like a twig.’ In true Overwatch fashion, Winston told the team over comms to be wary of the new floating man. It was easy for the most part since the man seemed to stay the farthest from the payload. Though, he had pulled out the most frustratingly intriguing move from his arsenal and sent the team into the air for a solid 3 seconds, holding them suspended as if from wires. And, after, slammed straight into the concrete of the road. McCree showed Lena the bruise he had on his back and elbows, and she decided she didn’t want to know the details.

What the team soon realized, however, was that this new member was obviously not trained in Talon’s formations and tactics. He seemed to travel wildly, away from his team and hidden behind walls like he was terrified. This made it much too easy to corner him when the time came. It was shocking to everyone when he clutched his head, tears pouring from the corners of his eyes, shaking so violently Mercy had made everyone stand back to give him space. And, right there, he fainted and collapsed.

‘Impossibly puzzling,’ Mercy had sighed, enlisting Genji and McCree to help pick the man up and load him into their escape craft where she stayed for the whole of the mission. With one less team member, the Talon force deemed their endeavor fruitless and retreated through the cracks. As the team headed home, there was little they could do but wonder. Even if Reinhardt insisted that the man be placed under chain and rope, Mercy shot him down with possibly the most dolorous expression on earth.

The kindest soul Lena’s ever met, that’s for sure.

She didn’t know what to think when Jack had sent her an urgent memo calling her to the interrogation room the day after the team came back. The tale of the mystic man had spread all over the base and past every agent’s lips, so she had no doubt it would be about that. But, calling her?

She steps into the room and immediately regrets doing so. Her eyes land first on the man on the other side of the glass because he’s so prominently distorted beyond what she could even believe. He looks as if he’s being pulled apart at the seams, versions of him tearing away at his physical body to break free. Angela and Jack sit in the recording portion, watching him. McCree nods to Lena when she enters, his eyes averting to the floor afterward. The distress is palpable, lingering. 

“What- what’s happening to him?” Is the first thing Lena thinks to ask, her lips pulling tight into a grimace. Jack turns, scarred face crinkling as he considers her.

Gruffly, he replies, “We were hoping you’d tell us.” He focuses back on the glass, not so much staring through but on a plane beyond. 

“We’ve found records of him and reports of his person from news outlets.” Mercy starts, pulling up a holoview on the glass. It displays a rather placid image of the man in question, his name, age, and height. Then, one by one, dozens of documents and newspaper articles. “Siebren de Kuiper, codename Sigma, was a former astrophysicist caught in a deadly experiment with gravity. He had been renowned for his research but hidden in a government facility when the accident happened. I’ve tried to find an answer myself, but…” Mercy pauses herself, clutching tight to the hem of her shirt, “It is something truly beyond my knowledge. His experiment has done something to him I cannot understand.”

“We were hoping you would know what happened,” Jack states again, this piercing cold tone prickling the air. “It’s similar to your… experience.” He says it tentatively, but it sounds ungenuine. Lena looks back at Sigma, studying his movement. He shakes with no control, muttering to himself things she can’t make out. His body warps into different states, in and out again with no discernable pattern. Her heart splinters, almost feeling the tug of some unseen force dragging her soul from her.

“Is it safe to talk to him?” She asks, if only for her own safety.

“He didn’t hurt none of us when we brought ‘im down ‘ere.” McCree pipes up if only to set Lena more at ease. She glances around at all three, takes in possibly the heaviest breath she’s ever had to, and walks to the door. 

She opens it, and the air turns five degrees colder. Sigma, if he has any senses, doesn’t seem to notice her walk in. Lena holds her hands up in a non-threatening way, approaching the twitching man slowly like he’s a bomb about to go off. She flips names back and forth on her tongue, trying to figure out how to address him as nicely as possible while in this state.

“Dr. de Kuiper,” She decides, speaking slowly, “My name is Lena Oxton. I am a member of Overwatch and you are currently being hosted in one of our bases. Could you please speak to me?” Standing a good 10 feet away, she stops, waiting for a reaction.

It comes at a snail’s pace, Sigma’s face lifting, spazzing as he flits his eyes to her. Startled, still. His palms lay flat on the table, holding him upright. He looks like he’s being weighed down, back hunched as his head struggles to stay straight. The wild look in his pale eyes says so much that Lena can't form into words. She… feels it. It, whatever it is, melds tightly around her body, pressing with a crushing insistence. It hurts to even breathe, and she sucks in the tiniest of breaths. The coronal accelerator on her chest whirs for the briefest of moments and she regains control. Slipping sand becomes solid concrete, and she can see the surprise the doctor expresses.

"You are different." His voice is thickly accented and tinged with a glaze of intrigue.

The words, while simple, are difficult to parse through and glean their exact meaning. Lena can only assume he had something to do with the compression. An increase in gravity? Certainly sounded like the ability he had while in Rialto, if not more centralized.

"My name is Lena Oxton," She tries again, "I am-"

"Yes, I heard you." And, with a surprising amount of suddenness, the man rises from the chair and floats midair. Lena takes a slow step back, watching. She's certainly never seen  _ that  _ before. "What is it that keeps you here?" 

His cryptic words make Lena's brain do a double-take.

"What-" She tries to question further, but Sigma comes within arms reach and Lena really has no choice but to keep her ground. The hand that gingerly touches her accelerator was an unseen one.

And, for a moment, she feels something kindred in him.

This swirling pit of loneliness (a year Lena, a whole  _ year _ ) burrows into her bones and she feels such a familiar ache in the shaking his fingertips do on her lifeline. Whispers of an older time, something she's never seen but feels like she remembers (keep it together, keep it together) flash floods her mind and it's all she can do to hold her head up and bear the pinprick pain firing off from her temples.

Gravity, again, feels like it weighs on her heavier, but in a shared burden. She sees why Sigma sags his body, being pressed down by such heavy consequences.

An experiment gone wrong rings so true in her ears.

'Classified dead', she thinks. 'He got the worst outcome.' She had been helped, saved (thank god for Winston). Dr. de Kuiper? He was swept under the rug. No wonder he's so…

"You feel it too. Even with your anchor, you feel the universe's pull." Sigma draws his hand back and Lena is lighter than she's ever felt before. "What happened?" He asks with such genuine curiosity, the oddest look on his face, that Lena couldn't deny him. He sat and she did too.

  
  
  
  
  


Minutes turned into hours as Lena talked her whole life away, and she didn't even care if her fellow agents listened on the other side of the wall. Sigma… understood. He could attest to the feeling of being split apart, of having the world ripped away from you, of not knowing where in space you even were.

Their circumstances may be different, but the doctor's relief of finding someone who  _ knew _ made tears fall from his eyes. Lena, not knowing what exactly to do, simply held a hand out over the table. Sigma took it delicately, the sad fragility to his physique coming to light. Living in a government-sanctioned half-hospital, half-mental institute didn't bode well for his health.

When he explained Talon to her, she knew she had to help. She knew she needed to convince Winston that Sigma was good. At heart, he truly, truly is. Talon twisted its claws into him and turned his mind into a mushy dough that they could mold and he knew no better. Lena knew she would not abuse this.

"Dr. de Kuiper-"

"Please, call me Siebren." The childlike excitement of getting rid of formalities grew the smallest smile on his face.

"Siebren, could you- could you consider what you're doing? What you're doing with Talon."

"We are trying to make a better world. It is so pitiful we are on such opposite sides. They could use a brilliant mind like yours." He explains, expression souring at the topic.

"But do you know what they're really doing? Do you know why you ended up fighting us?" Lena doesn't want to give him a chance, so pulling her comm out of her pocket, she opens as many tabs as she can of Talon's recent attacks. Stopping Overwatch's shipment of nanites to poor countries consumed by the Omniums was what she showed him first.

The look on his face screamed with so much, but he just remained silent as Lena explained.

He had been dissociating while they talked, little bits of his skin peeling away into another form as they talked, getting fuzzy and distant, but it wasn't nearly as violent as it was when she first saw him.

Now, though, his anger - raging like a flame - ripped into him with such intensity Lena grabbed for his hand again. It wavered, but remained mostly solid in her grasp.

His emotions seemed so powerful, wrapped tightly and compressed into a bite-sized object he could chuck when needed, but it unraveled so quickly with the truth that Lena was scared she hurt him in a way she could not fix.

His hand stayed solid, even if his screams in a far off time and place were barely audible. His composure, by the end of his search, was commendable. His cheeks were still stained with dried salt tracks, but his fazing had come and gone and he was fully here for the time being.

"I had… no idea." Cracked with pressure in his throat, Sigma held his head in his hands.

"We can fix it."

"How could I possibly fix what I've done?"

Lena's heart was gonna burst.

"We can do it together, you and me. I'm doing my best to help people - you can too."

"After everything?" His disbelief is warranted, but Lena can't allow him to be negative.

"Join me. Join Overwatch." To help, she holds out her hand. He needs a friend. He needs someone he can talk to, who knows how he feels. He needs an anchor in this time and place. Lena can do that.

All the tension she held released as the doctor put his hand in hers.

  
  


* * *

"Hey Winston, could I see you for a sec?" Lena, later that day, calls up to the simian scientist in his lab.

"Of course Ms. Oxton, what is it that you- LENA WHY IS THE TALON AGENT IN THE HALLWAY?!"

"Oh, this is Sigma. Don't worry, he just wants to help. Just be nice to him and he'll talk quantum theory to you."


End file.
